Thursday, February 21, 2019

Smollett’s salary was reportedly over a million dollars before taxes — $65,000 per episode — according to a report from the Huffington Post.

The “Empire” actor on Wednesday was charged with a felony for filing a false report in the racist and homophobic assault he claimed to have suffered in Chicago last month. He turned himself in to police custody early Thursday.

Smollett was paid $65,000 per episode for his co-starring role in the most recent season of “Empire,” a well-placed source told HuffPost. On average, there are 18 episodes of “Empire” per season.

The 36-year-old actor claimed that he was the target of a racist and homophobic attack in downtown Chicago last month. Smollett claimed that he was beaten, had a rope wrapped around his neck, and had a chemical poured on him while his attackers yelled “This is MAGA country!”

His story has rapidly unraveled over the last week, and the police now believe that Smollett paid two brothers to orchestrate the attack on himself. Chicago Police Superintendent Johnson said Smollett paid the pair $3,500 by check, which law enforcement is possession of.

Tapping the top 1 percent just to fill the current deficit would require an 102 percent tax rate on those earning above $400,000 a year.

The reality is that paying for the omnibus Democratic wish list would take an 87 percent value added tax on every purchase made by every American, or a new 37 percent payroll tax on every wage earner, rich and poor, according the Manhattan Institute.

Disagreeing with a judge overseeing a similar case in Oregon, U.S. District Judge Paul Diamond in Philadelphia ruled on Tuesday that the Constitution does not guarantee what the boys and the Clean Air Council called a due process right to a “life-sustaining climate system.”

Diamond also said the boys, who were 7 and 11 when the lawsuit was filed in November 2017, could not trace their respective severe allergies and asthma to White House policies.

He said this meant the plaintiffs lacked standing to sue Trump, Energy Secretary Rick Perry, former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt and other defendants who had moved to dismiss the case.

“Plaintiffs’ disagreement with defendants is a policy debate best left to the political process,” wrote Diamond, an appointee of President George W. Bush. “Because I have neither the authority nor the inclination to assume control of the Executive Branch, I will grant defendants’ motion.”

Wednesday, February 20, 2019

Breakdancing, an acrobatic style of street dance typically set to hip-hop or funk music, would be making its first appearance in the Olympics, while the three other sports will all be introduced at the 2020 Games in Tokyo.

Karate and baseball/softball, all part of the Tokyo programme, are also candidates, as well as squash, which has been repeatedly rebuffed, and petanque.

At least 20 disciplines from federations recognised by the IOC have applied for inclusion.

Local organisers must submit the recommended list to the IOC which will make a decision in December 2020, following the Tokyo Games.

Breakdancing appeared at last year's Summer Youth Olympic Games in Buenos Aires, in the form of "battles" -- or duels -- decided by judges, and falls under the auspices of the World Dance Sport Federations (WDSF).

Through the app, the student offered to sell cocaine, "Molly" and "Shrooms," and also offered customers special requests, prosecutors said.

A university police officer who noticed posters advertising the app around campus then worked with the Department of Homeland Security to try to get drugs from Howard via the application.

Authorities used the app to request weed and cocaine and then coordinated with Howard through Snapchat to buy the drugs, according to prosecutors. The undercover sting operation included four separate drug buys. On the fourth encounter, campus police officers didn't buy drugs from Howard and instead arrested him.

Authorities in Chicago on Wednesday approved felony criminal charges against "Empire" actor Jussie Smollett, hours after he was "officially classified as a suspect in a criminal investigation" for allegedly "filing a false police report" in connection with his Jan. 29 attack claims, police said.

The update in the case was provided by the department's Chief of Communications Officer Anthony Guglielmi on Twitter, who said the Cook County State's Attorney's Office approved the "Disorderly Conduct / Filing a False Police Report" charges.

"Detectives will make contact with his legal team to negotiate a reasonable surrender for his arrest," he continued.

So far, Smollet has not surrendered, Chicago police told Fox News. His attorneys were made aware of the charges.

It's one thing to hammer the rich for failing to “pay their fair share” in front of a bank of cameras, quite another while sipping wine together in the mansions of Beverly Hills and penthouses of New York City while asking them to write a check for $5,000, or more.

Democratic strategist Doug Schoen said it happens every election, but especially this one.

"This Is an election where the ultra-wealthy are going to pay more pay more in contributions. Pay more to super PACs and, ultimately, if the Democrats win pay more in taxes," he said.

Early Wednesday, the Sanders Campaign released a statement announcing it raised $6 million from small donors – averaging $27 each – in the first 24 hours after Sanders announced. It was signed 'Paid for Bernie...not billionaires."

By contrast, Sen. Cory Booker is scheduled to attend a Silicon Valley fundraiser Saturday at the home of Laura and Gary Lauder, heir to the Estee Lauder fortune, which, according to Fortune, is worth $13.7 billion.

Booker proposes raising the estate tax to 65 percent on wealthy families like the Lauders. Booker opposed the Trump tax cut because it increased the national debt, though even the Washington Post said Booker's platform "would add trillions to the federal debt."

Sarah Isgur Flores, the chief Department of Justice spokeswoman under then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions and a former campaign aide to Carly Fiorina, will help oversee CNN’s 2020 campaign coverage. CNN appears to have a habit of hiring former Obama officials to handle coverage — particularly current anchor and former chief national security correspondent Jim Sciutto — but the addition of a Trump administration official led to severe criticism of the network from the left.
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David Rutz, a managing editor for The Washington Free Beacon, argued that the criticism is hypocritical by listing the number of former Democratic officials who now serve in high-profile roles in the news business. For example, ABC’s chief political correspondent George Stephanopoulos served as a senior adviser and communications director in the Bill Clinton White House.

New York Magazine’s Josh Barro also attempted to quell some of the outrage, noting that Flores’ title as “political editor” does not mean she will be the sole person in charge of 2020 coverage. He also slammed the idea that there are too many conservatives in political media.

Childcare is expensive. Nationwide it averages around $10,000 per child, and runs as high as $20,000 per child in Warren’s home state of Massachusetts. The idea that the subsidies—a family of four with $85,000 of income would receive subsidies worth more than $14,000—would not draw families away from the home and into the centers is implausible.

The marketing campaign for the Warrens would also likely draw families away from home care. In promoting the program, Senator Warren has been touting the alleged benefits of out-of-home childcare, although the social science on this is far more uncertain than she lets on. It’s very likely that families will feel increased social pressure to enroll children—for the sake of the children. We’ve already seen this in areas that offer free pre-school.

It’s very likely that instead of the number of children in childcare centers rising from 6.8 million to 12 million—as Warren’s economists predict–the number would likely be quite a bit higher.

But even if they are right about the number of children enrolled in the program, their math still does not add up. With 12 million children at $14,500 per head, the program would cost $174 billion—more than $100 billion more than what Zandi and Koropeckyj estimate.

Under the final text, any online community, platform or service that has existed for three or more years, or is making €10,000,001/year or more, is responsible for ensuring that no user ever posts anything that infringes copyright, even momentarily. This is impossible, and the closest any service can come to it is spending hundreds of millions of euros to develop automated copyright filters. Those filters will subject all communications of every European to interception and arbitrary censorship if a black-box algorithm decides their text, pictures, sounds or videos are a match for a known copyrighted work. They are a gift to fraudsters and criminals, to say nothing of censors, both government and private.

Tuesday, February 19, 2019

First, some good news: The claim that insects will all be annihilated within the century is absurd. Almost everyone I spoke with says that it’s not even plausible, let alone probable. “Not going to happen,” says Elsa Youngsteadt from North Carolina State University. “They’re the most diverse group of organisms on the planet. Some of them will make it.” Indeed, insects of some sort are likely to be the last ones standing. Any event sufficiently catastrophic to scour the world of insects would also render it inhospitable to other animal life. “If it happened, humans would no longer be on the planet,” says Corrie Moreau from Cornell University.

The sheer diversity of insects makes them, as a group, resilient—but also impossible to fully comprehend. There are more species of ladybugs than mammals, of ants than birds, of weevils than fish. There are probably more species of parasitic wasps than of any other group of animal. In total, about 1 million insect species have been described, and untold millions await discovery. And having learned of a creature’s existence is very different from actually knowing it: Most of the identified species are still mysterious in their habits, their proclivities, and—crucially for this discussion—their numbers.

Roberts has proposed city-sponsored educational forums in order to involve all members of the community.

“… [O]nce you set aside the issue of sexual identity, other political differences arise,” University of California at Riverside professor Benjamin Bishin said, according to The Post. “The real question is whether these representatives from one traditionally marginalized group can adequately represent those from another, in this case Latinos,” he continued.

“I’m in the group that says we can celebrate our all-LGBTQ council, but that we can also improve,” LGBT Community Center of the Desert community engagement director Alexis Ortega said, according to The Post.

“Never before was there a complaint that we weren’t representative,” bisexual council member Christy Holstege said, according to The Post. “This may not be the most inclusive council, especially when it comes to people of color. But we have to be careful that this is not used against us.”

Narrowly focused on criminalization, rather than broader LGBT issues like same-sex marriage, the campaign was conceived partly in response to the recent reported execution by hanging of a young gay man in Iran, the Trump administration’s top geopolitical foe.

Grenell, as Trump’s envoy to Germany, has been an outspoken Iran critic and has aggressively pressed European nations to abandon the 2015 nuclear deal and re-impose sanctions. But while the Trump administration has had some success in pressuring Iran through stepped-up U.S. penalties, efforts to bring the Europeans along have thus far largely fallen flat.

Reframing the conversation on Iran around a human rights issue that enjoys broad support in Europe could help the United States and Europe reach a point of agreement on Iran. Grenell called the hanging “a wake-up call for anyone who supports basic human rights,” in Bild, a leading German newspaper, this month.

Monday, February 18, 2019

In the past year, for example, Washington state voters rejected — for a second time — a proposal to tax carbon dioxide emissions. Carbon tax opponents successfully framed the proposal as an energy tax that would raise prices and do nothing for future global warming. The tax was backed by Democrats like Gov. Jay Inslee, who is also mulling a 2020 presidential run.

Inslee, who styles himself as the Democratic “climate candidate,” has also failed to push major climate policies through the legislature and using his own executive authority.

“It shows you how ineffective he’s been even in a state like Washington,” Todd Myers, environmental policy director at the Washington Policy Center, told The Daily Caller News Foundation in a recent interview.

The rest of the Left's green ambitions seem to be following this trend, as well...

The current percentage of Americans naming government as the most important problem is nearly twice as high as the 18% recorded in November. That increase likely reflects public frustration with the government shutdown that occurred from late December through most of January. Gallup observed a similar double-digit spike spanning the 2013 government shutdown, from 16% in September 2013 to 33% in October 2013.

Americans have different things in mind when they name the government as the most important problem. An analysis of the verbatim responses to the question from the latest survey finds that 11% of Americans specifically cite "Donald Trump" as the most important problem, while 5% name "the Democrats" or "liberals" and 1% "Congress." About half of those who say the government is the most important problem -- 18% of U.S. adults -- blame both parties or cite "gridlock," "lack of cooperation" or the shutdown more generally. The latter figure has grown from 6% in December and 12% in January.

Sunday, February 17, 2019

The recently-declared 2020 presidential candidate was on a tour of female-owned businesses in Columbia, South Carolina, at the time — and according to a series of tweets, was convinced by several of the reporters flanking her to try on a rainbow sequined jacket.
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Harris’ campaign moved on to the next boutique. But a number of pundits — and fellow journalists — were a little concerned about the reporters’ level of involvement in the whole affair.

“We agree that our teachers deserve to be paid more,” OUSD spokesman John Sasaki said, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Saturday. “It’s just a matter of how much can we pay, given our financial reality.”

The district has suffered from financial woes for awhile, however. California loaned OUSD $100 million in emergency funds — the largest at the time — after gathering a $37 million deficit in 2003. The district managed to get into a $30 million deficit in 2017, according to the Chronicle.

Generous teacher pay raises, decreasing enrollment and hefty special education costs contributed to the financial crisis in the district.

The district has been caught for misusing funds like paying for parking and legal fees, the Chronicle reported.

Which raises the question-why would a good teacher want to work for such a system in the first place?

The company reported that its English-language digital businesses, which includes The Onion, lost $32.5 million in the fourth quarter of 2018, compared to just $3 million in the same quarter a year earlier. But the losses were even greater in the third quarter of 2018, with the company reporting a loss of $96.1 million for the U.S. digital brands.

Univision is still looking for a buyer for the Gizmodo Media Group properties, which the company still believes to be strong.

"Our English-language digital brands are longstanding, recognized sources of news, information and entertainment in their verticals that we believe can thrive as part of a company whose focus better aligns with theirs," the Univision spokesperson said.

It may simply be harder for the Onion to keep up with real life these days...

A source close to the investigation confirms to CBS News the brothers told detectives Smollett paid them to participate in the alleged attack on January 29 and that they purchased the rope — which was found around Smollett's neck — at a nearby hardware store. The source said detectives have evidence to corroborate the sale, something the men's attorney alluded to Friday night.

"New evidence that was brought to their attention, obviously I had it, my clients had it," said Gloria Schmidt, the brothers' attorney.

The Chicago Police Department released a statement Saturday night saying information from the brothers had "shifted the trajectory of the investigation."

"We can confirm that the information received from the individuals questioned by police earlier in the Empire case has in fact shifted the trajectory of the investigation. We've reached out to the Empire cast member's attorney to request a follow-up interview."

Saturday, February 16, 2019

“Neither CBS This Morning nor NBC’s Today have even acknowledged this new information from Senate investigators since the news broke on February 12,” MRC reports. “ABC’s Good Morning America briefly touched on it in a news brief totaling less than one minute on February 13.”

What’s especially fascinating is that NBC’s Ken Dilanian broke the original news of the Senate report, and NBC is still refusing to cover the story.

The reasons for this are quite obvious: the media know a reckoning is on the horizon, and they are buying time in the hopes of finding a way to wriggle out of it.

Health care is the 800-pound gorilla in the room. Federal spending on health care (not including state expenditures) is projected to be $17 trillion over the next 10 years, dwarfing the cost of Social Security and the military. By 2047, health care spending will be about 25 percent greater than the insolvent and crushing cost of Social Security. As such, health care in itself is the largest driver of the other great crisis, as noted: the mushrooming cost of the interest on the debt itself. Health care spending alone will be greater than all the revenue from payroll taxes and corporate income taxes combined and almost as large as individual income tax revenue.

This is all going to the creation of a monopoly in a circuitous death spiral of price inflation and increased government spending. It’s no mystery why our national expenditures on health care have popped from $27 billion in 1960 to over $3.3 trillion today. Assuming health care would rise at the same rate as the rest of the economy, that number would be under $250 billion today. If we flushed $1.6 trillion down the toilet every year, we’d come out with a better result because we’d just waste money. Now, we are taking that wasted money and artificially inflating the cost of health care to the point that nobody can afford it without government continuing the death spiral of spending, monopolizing, and price inflation.

Mr. Trump, in lengthy remarks on the courts system, said he expected to be sued over his emergency declaration. “We will possibly get a bad ruling. And then we’ll get another bad ruling. And then we’ll end up in the Supreme Court, and hopefully we’ll get a fair shake,” he said.

He also suggested he didn’t need the full $8 billion his administration is seeking to build the wall. “So we have a chance of getting close to $8 billion,” he said. “Whether it’s $8 billion, $2 billion or $1.5 billion, it’s going to build a lot of wall.”

Mr. Trump voiced frustration with the resistance to funding a border wall and sought to play down the drama of his declaration, noting that emergency declarations had been put in place before. He added: “There’s rarely been a problem. They sign it, nobody cares.” Previous presidents have signed emergency declarations, but not to fund initiatives that Congress declined to fund.

In addition to the wall funds in the spending bill, White House acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said Friday that the president will seek to divert about $6.7 billion from elsewhere in the government to build 234 miles of steel bollard wall—a move that is certain to invite court challenges. Mr. Mulvaney said the president was taking executive action because Congress had proved “simply incapable” of allowing the level of wall funding Mr. Trump had demanded.

Not incapable, just unwilling. But do some of his critics have a point?

Thursday, February 14, 2019

Last year, the New York Times reported that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein discussed recruiting Cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment.

McCabe confirmed the report in a new interview with “60 Minutes” host Scott Pelley, who relayed what McCabe told him on “CBS This Morning” Thursday.

“There were meetings at the Justice Department at which it was discussed whether the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet could be brought together to remove the president of the United States under the 25th Amendment,” Pelley said.

Trump wasn't paranoid, they apparently really were trying to get rid of him...

Japan made it illegal in 2008 for citizens between 40 and 74 years old to exceed the state-prescribed limit of 85 centimeters for male waistlines and 90 centimeters for female waistlines. Russia is on a drive to reduce obesity and improve nutrition as part of President Vladimir Putin’s national goals signed after his inauguration in May 2018, which included calls to ensure sustainable natural population growth, reported The Moscow Times.
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“We’ve studied the experience of countries with the highest life expectancy very carefully,” Rospotrebnadzor’s chief Anna Popova told the state-run RIA Novosti news agency on Thursday, pointing out Tokyo’s experience with waistline reduction, colloquially known in Japan as the “Metabo-law,” reported The Moscow Times.

“The applicability [of the practice] to Russia and Russian citizens is a question that will be discussed over our first year of work on the national goals,” she said, adding that studies currently being conducted would help reach a conclusion.

Wednesday, February 13, 2019

“No one has seen the final wording of a long and complicated bill we will be expected to vote on tomorrow evening,” Republican Maryland Rep. Andy Harris told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “That’s no way to run a legislature.”

Republican Study Chairman Mike Johnson also confirmed that “as of lunch on Wednesday, members of the RSC, and to our knowledge, even members of the conference committee, had not seen the text.”

“It has been reported that [House Majority Leader Steny] Hoyer has said if the bill is dropped today we will consider it tomorrow. This is reminiscent of the, ‘you must pass it to find out what is in it,’ Obamacare debacle,” Johnson said to TheDCNF. “This bill is expected to be well over 1,000 pages, and we will potentially have less than 24 hours to digest it. This is absurd.”

Although some Americans think of Canada as a quasi-socialist economy thanks to its single-payer health-care system, it’s not actually a high-tax country. The top federal income tax rate in Canada is 33 percent — lower than the equivalent rate in the U.S. The provincial tax rate in Ontario, home to the business hub of Toronto, is 13.16 percent, similar to the 13.3 percent paid by Californians.

If the U.S. raised taxes a lot on the rich, would Canada follow suit? It’s true that during the past century or so, the top tax rates charged by major developed economies have tended to move roughly in concert:

But that doesn’t mean Canada would necessarily follow the U.S.’s lead on top taxation. And even if it did raise taxes on the rich when the U.S. did, it wouldn’t necessarily raise them by as much.

Resources and wealth do not exist in a vacuum. Someone had to provide and pay for the tables, chairs, ovens, checkout computers, et al. that allowed Panera Cares to provide a service to their customers. And that's not to mention the food costs, salaries, and the overhead that come with doing business in a building that requires electricity, climate-controlled temperatures, and, well, walls and a ceiling. Making money costs money. This is why businesses that give their stuff away or sell it below the market rate go out of business. All the caring and empathy in the world can't change the fact that it cost money to provide Panera Cares' customers with food. And if the money that the company receives back is less than the money the company spent, everyone eventually loses.

The other side of that is that humans tend to be greedy and all about self-preservation. If you offer a customer the option to pay whatever they want, the vast majority of customers are not going to inquire about how much it cost the restaurant to put the food on their plate. Instead, as a general rule, customers are going to approach payment in terms of themselves.

"I read that by 2030 they're suggesting that every building in America becomes clean energy, conforms to clean energy, just to put that in perspective, because it's not realistic, that would mean that between 2,000 and 3,000 buildings a day would have to be reconstructed to conform to what they're saying," Schultz said. "So let's be sensible about what we're suggesting,"

Schultz' comments are likely to further raise tensions between him and Democrats running against Trump. Several Democrats have said Schultz' candidacy would only split the anti-Trump vote and help Trump win re-election in 2020.

Schultz pledged that he would drop out if it becomes clear he can't win and that his campaign is only helping Trump, but said it's too early to make that assessment. In the meantime, he also criticized the "Green New Deal's" employment guarantee provision.

"I don't understand how you're going to give a job for everybody, how you're going to give free college to everybody, how you're going to create clean energy throughout the country in every building of the land," he said. "I think it's immoral to suggest that we can tally up $20, $30, $40, $50 trillion of debt to solve a problem that could be solved in a different way."

Tuesday, February 12, 2019

Gingell, who blogs under the name Cardiffornia Gurl, begins her message by insisting that thin privilege is a very real thing, arguing that "if you're thin, you have a certain privilege," because "everyday tasks that a thinner person can take for granted can leave a plus-size person like myself feeling full of anxiety, burden, and upset."

The video shows Gingell out in the world where fat people have problems, such as on the subway where others make them feel uncomfortable, or at a bakery where they might be judged for their choices. In both scenes, she is seen eating while making the case for her oppression.

While Gingell does not explicitly define what it means for an individual to be considered a "thin" person, she explains that you likely have thin privilege if you can go shopping for clothes "and take an outfit away that very same day."

Harris, by her own admission, was smoking pot and listening to Tupac and Snoop Dogg — while she was in college.

Here's the thing: Harris finished her schooling in 1989. Tupac didn't release an album until 1991.

As for Snoop Dogg, well, he didn't release his first album until 1993.

Harris did, however, start working as a deputy district attorney in Alameda County, California, in 1990, where part of her job would have been to enforce existing drug laws.

Anything else?

Oh yes.

During her time as a prosecutor, Harris was as hard-nosed on drug laws as you could get. And when Harris was California Attorney General, she opposed the legalization of marijuana "as late as 2014," according to Reason.

"Let's level about the high-speed rail," Newsom said. "Let's be real, the current project as planned would cost too much and, respectfully, take too long. Right now, there simply isn't a path to get from Sacramento to San Diego, let alone from San Francisco to L.A. I wish there were."

Recent estimates assessed former Gov. Jerry Brown's plan would be cost about $77 billion and be completed in 2033. Newsom then pivoted to his alternate proposal, to instead connect the two Central Valley cities, 160 miles apart.

"Critics are going to say that's a train to nowhere, but I think that's wrong and that's offensive," said the governor.

"If we write a report based upon the facts that we have, then we don't have anything that would suggest there was collusion by the Trump campaign and Russia," said Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, in an interview with CBS News last week.

Burr was careful to note that more facts may yet be uncovered, but he also made clear that the investigation was nearing an end.

"We know we're getting to the bottom of the barrel because there're not new questions that we're searching for answers to," Burr said.

Monday, February 11, 2019

Drawing information from the Department of Justice, the report shows 25 public figures were convicted of charges tied to corruption in 2017 in the City of Chicago and the northern third of Illinois. 2017 was the most recent year for which the DOJ data was available, the report says.

More than 30 Chicago City Council members have been tied to corruption cases since the 1970’s, with Ald. Edward Burke (14th) becoming the latest Chicago politician to make headlines after being charged with one count of attempted extortion on Thursday, Jan. 3 for allegedly trying to use his power on the City Council to solicit business for his private law firm.

The charge against Burke, Chicago’s most powerful and longest-running City Council member, comes on the heels of two FBI raids carried out in his offices late last year. After serving the city’s Southwest Side for 50 years, the charge puts Burke on the ever-growing list of disgraced city officials.

Although Chicago accounts for 82 percent of the state’s public corruption convictions, according to the report, federal corruption is a statewide problem.

Statewide, Illinois ranked–on a per capita basis–as the third most corrupt state in America. In 2017, the state had 34 convictions for public corruption.

But while Democratic officials are distancing themselves from Alcoff now, until recently he was a well-connected, aspiring political player in Washington who may have even had a hand in key policy proposals.

His endorsement apparently mattered when several congressional Democrats in February 2018 issued press releases with his quote backing their bill on regulating payday lenders.

As the payday campaign manager for the liberal group Americans for Financial Reform, Alcoff participated in congressional Democratic press conferences, was a guest on a House Democratic podcast and met with senior officials at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from 2016 through 2018.

Sunday, February 10, 2019

“There’s really only two options for when we die: cremation and burial,” said Katrina Spade, a human composting advocate and CEO of Recompose, the company hoping to become the go-to firm for human composting in Washington if it becomes legal.

Neither of those options “felt particularly meaningful to me and I think if that’s the case, it’s true for others as well,” Spade said.

“They’ve already done lots of research about the safe and effective ways to recycle animals back to the land on farms,” she said.

“We proved recomposition was indeed safe and effective for humans as well,” Spade said, referring to a study conducted at Washington State University using the corpses of six human donors.

According to Spade, human composting involves covering the dead body with natural materials, such as straw or wood chips, which leads to accelerated decomposition over the course of three to seven weeks.

It's a seductive idea. Even some libertarians like Charles Murray think it's worth a shot. With one dollar out of every three spent by the government on social welfare programs going to feed the bureaucracy, the idea of giving the poor direct cash payments seems an attractive way to save taxpayer money.

Unfortunately, it doesn't work.

Finland ended a similar experiment in April and the results have just been released.
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This is an idea thought up by people who have no clue about human psychology. You give people money and don't ask anything of them for it and, guess what? You get nothing in return.

Saturday, February 9, 2019

This cockamamie scheme is not about saving the planet. It's about massively expanding the size and scope of the U.S. government, making mincemeat of the Constitution, and spending trillions upon trillions of dollars to make us all dependent on government.

It's as if Vladimir Lenin has been resurrected and his plan to nationalize business, industry, and capital has been reimagined.

The reaction to Ocasio-Cortez's plan has been so negative -- even from Democrats -- that she's been forced to pull the text from her website. It's that bad.

Graham has the right idea. Democrats should not be allowed to quietly tiptoe away from this massive political blunder and they should be told to put up or shut up.

The CEA estimated that five million Americans will choose an AHP or a short-term plan as the result of the Trump administration’s health care executive orders. The study also suggested that another five million will benefit as the result of the repeal of Obamacare’s individual mandate.

Many Americans have contended that because 80 percent of those who paid the Obamacare mandate made less than $50,000 a year, the individual mandate repeal serves as a significant middle-class tax break.

The CEA said about 87 percent of Obamacare exchange enrollees receive ACA subsidies and “only pay a fraction of their health insurance costs.”

Many Obamacare proponents suggested that the repeal of the individual mandate, as well as the expansion of short-term plans and AHPs, would lead to higher premiums on the Obamacare exchanges.

In contrast, the CEA contended that because more people will use AHPs and short-term plans and fewer people will use the ACA exchanges, the government will save $185 billion over the next ten years.

BuzzFeed News reported more alleged aggression that sometimes left staffers in tears. One was reportedly hit after a binder was launched into the air.

The news outlet reportedly interviewed eight former staffers who complained of a workplace governed by "fear, anger, and shame." Many employees, the report stated, found the environment "intolerably cruel." Bouts of rage and humiliation happened "almost daily," according to interviews and emails obtained by BuzzFeed.

Almost anything allegedly set her off, from grammar mistakes to using the word "community" in press releases or failing to recharge her iPad, BuzzFeed reported.

Wanting to wield power and wishing to be President aren’t synonymous, according to Victoria, who doesn’t think her dad would have been interested in the latter.

“I don’t think that would have been a job he would’ve wanted,” she said. “He was too much a people person. He believed politicians tell nothing but lies. It was all about games and the drama and the chutzpah — he didn’t buy that.”

However, if her dad were alive and ran for office in this day and age, she thinks he would have won.

Finland's minister of health and social affairs Pirkko Mattila said the impact on employment of the monthly pay cheque of 560 euros ($635) "seems to have been minor on the grounds of the first trial year".

But participants in the trial were happier and healthier than the control group.

"The basic income recipients of the test group reported better wellbeing in every way (than) the comparison group," chief researcher Olli Kangas said.

Chief economist for the trial Ohto Kanniainen said the low impact on employment was not a surprise, given that many jobless people have few skills or struggle with difficult life situations or health concerns.

"Economists have known for a long time that with unemployed people financial incentives don't work quite the way some people would expect them to," he added.

"It is usually, ‘If you don't give me something then I will reveal or report something.’ The person usually wants money," he said.

Shapiro said California and federal law defines extortion as the "depriving of property or attempting to do so by threatened force, violence or fear. Shapiro said it is clear AMI was seeking something from Bezos, but the question is whether that contract is actually property.

"They didn't demand money, just an agreement," he said. That makes it far harder to prosecute, he said. "You rarely see this kind of extortion case filed involving lawyers. Things can get muddy between lawyers.”

But Shapiro said the "extraordinary circumstances here might mean prosecutors give it a second look as it could have a profound impact on public policy and public perception."

The first batch of weekly data from the IRS offers a very preliminary, unrepresentative look at what’s happening to taxpayers using the new tax system, which increased the standard deduction, lowered rates, and curbed some deductions. Typically, early filers are those who expect significant refunds, while those who owe money file closer to the mid-April deadline.

The picture will become clearer later this month, as tens of millions more returns are processed. The IRS is required to withhold certain refunds containing the earned-income tax credit and child tax credit until Feb. 15. The IRS, which had been partially shut down in the run-up to filing season, says it is running smoothly so far.

Friday, February 8, 2019

On Wednesday, the superintendent of the Chicago Police Department announced that if Smollett is found guilty of filing a false police report, the Chicago P.D. will "pursue charges."
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Smollett claimed that he was attacked while walking home from Subway. He claimed he was on the phone with his manager during the time of the attack and continued home following the attack. The police have reviewed surveillance footage from the city block where the attack allegedly happened, but have yet to find any evidence of an attack in the area.

According to the Associated Press, the woman was a trained nurse and had drained more than a pint of blood from her son on 110 occasions, sometimes as frequently as once a week. This behavior began when her son was only 1 year old and continued until police arrested her when he was 6. The boy lives with his father now and has reportedly recovered.

She has since been arrested and sentenced to four years in prison. A court-ordered psychiatrist diagnosed the woman with Munchausen by proxy. People with this condition either make up symptoms in another person or do something to cause those symptoms, in order to make the that person appear sick. In one famous Munchausen by proxy case from 2015, a girl whose mother had made her believe for years that she was seriously ill, eventually snapped and murdered her mother.

The Daily Mail reported that the woman would post updates on her son's fake illness to social media and tried to get local news outlets to cover the story. When the prosecutor in her trial asked her about this, she said she had reached out because "I think, I felt, that it helped us. It was a statement. You can feel a bit alone. Both as a mother, but also as a mother with a sick child."

The prosecutor in her case responded by pointing out that she was only the mother of a sick child because she had made her child sick. She insisted that this wasn't the way she saw it.

Thursday, February 7, 2019

Ilhan Omar is upset that human physiology doesn't work the way she wants it to:

“Men naturally have a larger bone structure, higher bone density, stronger connective tissue and higher muscle density than women. These traits, even with reduced levels of testosterone do not go away. While [male-to-female athletes] may be weaker and less muscle than they once were, the biological benefits given them at birth still remain over that of a female.”

In her letter, Omar makes specific reference to International Olympic Committee guidelines, when deciding how to incorporate transgender athletes. However, as USA Powerlifting points out, IOC guidelines give various sports some latitude when it comes to implementing policy regarding transgender participation.

“…the IOC Guidelines also allows sports to determine the impact on fair play through such inclusion. The IPF Medical Committee, while respecting the rights of those who choose to transition, has been consistent in its opinion that use of testosterone and participation of male to female transgender athletes in our sport compromises fair play.”

House Bill 183, which was proposed by Rep. Mary Lou Marzian (D) Tuesday, states that "no person shall knowingly release or launch into the atmosphere more than twenty-five plastic balloons filled with gas that is lighter than air during a twenty-four hour period." Hot air balloons and balloons released indoors would be exempt.

Violators "shall be subject to a civil penalty of $100 per day for the first and all subsequent offenses."

Balloons have already been banned altogether in the city of Louisville since 2003, but law enforcement officials have been reluctant to enforce the law, according to the Courier-Journal.

The prohibition was spearheaded by animal rights activists, and the ordinance warns that runaway helium-filled balloons "are carried east by prevailing winds and burst over the Atlantic Ocean where they have been eaten by dolphins, sea turtles, seabirds and migratory waterfowl, sometimes resulting in the death of such animals by (an) intentional blockage."

Mallory said his untruthfulness was the result of "crushing depressions, delusional thoughts, morbid obsessions and memory problems" brought about by "severe bipolar II disorder."

His explanation was dismissed by UCLA psychiatry professor Carrie Bearden, who told the New Yorker that bipolar II disorder does not cause delusions, memory loss or deceptive behavior.

Mallory had claimed on several occasions that his mother had succumbed to cancer. His mother did indeed have cancer at one point, but is still living. She declined to be interviewed by a New Yorker reporter about her son's claims.

His father, however, did speak to the reporter, and denied that Mallory had ever himself had cancer, as he had claimed to co-workers in the past. "[N]o, Dan didn’t have it. He’s just been an absolutely perfect son. He has his faults, like we all do, he’s just a tremendous young man," the elder Mallory said.

The biggest political story of 2019 is that Democrats are embracing policies that include government control of ever-larger chunks of the private American economy.

Merriam-Webster defines socialism as “any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods.”

The U.S. may not be Venezuela, but consider the Democratic agenda that is emerging from Congress and the party’s presidential contenders. You decide if the proposals meet the definition of socialism.

Democrats have expressed fear that the uproar over the governor could jeopardize their chances of taking control of the GOP-dominated Virginia legislature this year. The party made big gains in 2017, in part because of a backlash against President Donald Trump, and has moved to within striking distance of a majority in both houses.

At the same time, the Democrats nationally have taken a hard line against misconduct in their ranks because women and minorities are a vital part of their base and they want to be able to criticize Trump’s behavior without looking hypocritical.

Trump accused Democrats Thursday of political bias, tweeting that “If the three failing pols were Republicans, far stronger action would be taken.”

The program, Panera Cares, was initially created to serve food to low-income people nine years ago in 2010. The concept was a pay-what-you-want business model in which patrons visiting the restaurant could eat for a donation.

In 2010, Ron Shaich — the company's founder and former CEO — said that the program's aim was a "test of humanity."

"Would people pay for it?" he asked during a TEDxStLouis talk. "Would people come in and value it?"
The answer was apparently "no," because here we are less than a decade later, with no Panera Cares' franchises running in the black.

The outlet also reported that through the project's nine-year run, many of the locations were "mobbed" by homeless people and students who ate without donating. Because of the "mob," one location was forced to limit its homeless patrons' meals to a few per week.

House Democratic leadership waved away Trump’s talk of unity, with Speaker Nancy Pelosi lamenting the president’s long history of “empty words” and the progressive Representative Rashida Tlaib of Michigan saying in an interview on MSNBC that “so much of what he was saying [doesn’t] translate into his actions.”

But where the most high-profile Democrats saw Trump performing the cause of unity, some moderate Democrats seemed reassured, particularly when it came to his calls for infrastructure investment and lowering prescription-drug prices. Representative Haley Stevens of Michigan said that she was “encouraged” by Trump’s comments on both fronts. “The president is right,” said Representative Max Rose, a freshman representing parts of New York City. “The American people are united around doing something to lower health-care costs, rebuild our infrastructure, and end the opioid epidemic.” Representative Anthony Brindisi of New York pledged on Twitter that in these areas, he will “be the first one at the table, ready & willing, to work [with] anyone serious about getting things done.”

In total, 1,016 new laws will take effect in California in 2019. In most cases, these range from the unnecessary to the silly to the sad.

In the “unnecessary” category, we have the requirement that only milk and water be published as beverage options on kids’ menus in sit-down restaurants. While childhood obesity is a huge problem, what do they actually expect to accomplish with this? When was the last time you saw a kid actually read the menu or order their own food and drinks? Parents aren’t actually prohibited from ordering their child a soda, milkshake or whatever else they want. The options are simply removed from menus.

As for “silly” new laws, the most notorious, of course, is the requirement that restaurants no longer automatically offer patrons plastic straws when they order a drink. Never mind the expectation that you are supposed to put your mouth on the side of a questionably clean glass every time you take a drink, but the law will be as ineffective as not listing soda on kids’ menus. Ask and you shall receive anyway.

Finally, when it comes to “sad” laws, the familiar is often the most depressing. It’s an established economic fact, demonstrated time and again, that raising minimum wage depresses the availability of jobs to entrants, who are simply priced out of the market as firms tighten their belts to offset the increased labor cost. And yet states such as California continue to pursue policies that will guarantee harm to those they claim they are trying to help.

Tuesday, February 5, 2019

Software-generated reports are heavy utilized in areas where quick figures are needed such as in financial journalism, sports statistics, and analyzing polling or other data. According to the New York Times, Bloomberg News uses automated technology in roughly a third of its content, racing against Reuters and even hedge funds to compete in delivering the latest business news.
Media executives insist that artificial intelligence is not a threat to human employees because machines cannot produce analyses and perspectives. But robo-journalism is capable of generating more than just numbers — with publications such Forbes using tools to provide templates and rough drafts to reporters, and the Los Angeles Times using machines to issue earthquake alerts and bots for mapping analyses.

Some Republicans have dubbed the bill the “Rain Tax,” saying another tax makes New Jersey even more unaffordable, and state Sen. Tom Kean Jr. agrees.

“We all want to protect our environment. We all want to preserve it for future generations. But this is a weighted tax. The citizens of New Jersey … really with no oversight and no way to defend themselves against tax increases at local levels,” Kean said.

When asked what he would say to taxpayers who say they cannot afford another tax, Codey said, “It’s a small cost to live safely.”

Attendees at the Notorious RBG in Song described Ginsburg as “glam,” and “resplendent,” and “magnificent,” but you’ll have to take their word for it.

In an era when every person is carrying a camera and isn’t afraid to use it, there wasn’t a single snap of the 85-year-old to be found. Every media story that covered her alleged appearance used file photos.

“What a delight to see RBG tonight at ‘Notorious RBG in Song,’ written & beautifully performed by her daughter-in-law, Patrice Michaels,” Post contributor David Hagedorn posted to Twitter. “She sat in the back, a few rows behind us, looking resplendent. Being hugged & wished a happy birthday by her made a grand night spectacular.”

Their downfall, according to police: intercepted emails in which the two discussed their plan on government-issued computers. Police said both men were government contractors, though their arrest reports don’t say which agency employed them.

The Homeland Security special agent who intercepted the emails said their strategy was “to smuggle the narcotics into the ship and distribute it once on board the ship,” according to their arrest reports.

The ship the men were trying to board wasn’t named in the reports.

I guess they had to have some sort of a backup plan in case of another shutdown...

Monday, February 4, 2019

Citing a sworn affidavit by Robertson as she filed for credit protection, Sky News reports that Cotten held “sole responsibility for handling the funds and coins.”

About $190 million in cryptocurrency and traditional money is said to be in “cold storage,” with the digital key held by Cotten. While Robertson has Cotten’s laptop, she does not know its password and even a security expert has been unable to get past the device’s encryption.
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In a statement posted on its website on Jan. 31, QuadrigaCX said that it applied for creditor protection in the Nova Scotia Supreme Court “to allow us the opportunity to address the significant financial issues that have affected our ability to serve our customers.”

“For the past weeks, we have worked extensively to address our liquidity issues, which include attempting to locate and secure our very significant cryptocurrency reserves held in cold wallets, and that are required to satisfy customer cryptocurrency balances on deposit, as well as sourcing a financial institution to accept the bank drafts that are to be transferred to us,” the company added, in its statement. “Unfortunately, these efforts have not been successful.”

"I want to tell all Indian kids that they don't owe their parents anything," Samuel told India's The Print. "I love my parents, and we have a great relationship, but they had me for their joy and their pleasure."

He added, "My life has been amazing, but I don't see why I should put another life through the rigamarole of school and finding a career, especially when they didn't ask to exist."
Samuel's belief is part of a system called "anti-natalism," which promotes the notion that children shouldn't be forced to be born, especially at the expense of the planet.

"Other Indian people must know that it is an option not to have children, and to ask your parents for an explanation as to why they gave birth to you," he explained.

A North Korean news site shared a spread from the men's fashion catalog, which shows several button-up formal shirts and a translation of the accompanying text.

"Clothing made from artificial flannelette fabrics composed of trace elements such as high-grade protein, amino acids, fruit juice, magnesium, iron and calcium, as clothing worn by people engaged in sailing, outdoor exploration and mountain climbing, can be eaten to avoid starvation in the event that food has run out," it reads.

Sunday, February 3, 2019

What does a person achieve in this world as an artist by the age of 22? How possible is it to show more than a flash of the ability you were born with? Part of the miracle that was Buddy Holly was how fully formed he was by this age—which isn’t to say that if you’re fully formed, you won’t be able to extend your growth, producing oohs and aahhs with your latest direction, your latest invention. Buddy Holly was a kicker of ass in terms of physicality, for his music felt like something that was launching itself bodily at you, but he could also kick your ass mentally, making listeners reconsider how far one might push rock’s geographical boundaries, until any conception of them vanished.

Increasingly, Silicon Valley seems to be governed by a Mafia-like cycle of shakedowns imposed by the mainstream media. It usually follows the same pattern.

First, a relentless wave of negative coverage, aimed at causing outrage about the success of the mainstream media’s competitors on social media. Words like “misinformation,” “hate,” and “conspiracy theories” usually feature in such reports. Example: BuzzFeed – We Followed YouTube’s Recommendation Algorithm Down The Rabbithole.

Second, disingenuous “requests for comment” to advertisers, sponsors, business partners — anyone who the social media platform or the content creator relies on for revenue. (Example: Mandatory.com – PewDiePie Claims Wall Street Journal Tried To Get Him ‘Fired From YouTube’.

Third, unconditional surrender by the social media platform, which promises to ban or cut ties with whoever the journalist objected to, or adjust its search results or algorithm to better appease the mainstream critics. (Example: YouTube Official Blog – Continuing Our Work To Improve Recommendations on YouTube.

Having seen how easy this game is, other journalists follow suit, taking aim at their personal favorite targets — whether its search results on YouTube or the criticism of progressive activists on Twitter. Silicon Valley might consider the advice of Rudyard Kipling — once you pay the Dane-geld, you never get rid of the Dane.

Roosevelt and his advisers were pushed by events they did not control and by political actors representing a broad range of ideas—communists, socialists, and labor radicals, as well as the followers of Huey Long, Father Charles Coughlin, and Francis Townsend. By the end of the 1930s, many in Washington believed that the New Deal, whatever it was, had failed. Although unemployment had fallen from its peak and some of the worst pain of the Depression had been mitigated, the economy had not recovered—and wouldn’t until World War II. Even the power and stability of the unions were truly secured only during the war. As the economist Alvin Hansen put it in 1940, when asked whether he believed the “basic principle” of the New Deal was economically sound: “I really do not know what the basic principle of the New Deal is.”

Saturday, February 2, 2019

Although she admitted Canadians might be “very grateful” to Netflix for offering a wide variety of programing, she urged them to “fast-forward to what happens after imperialism – and the damage that can do to local communities. So, all I would say is, let us be mindful of how it is we as Canadians respond to global companies coming into our country.”

Netflix’s Canadian pubic policy director was on-scene to hear Tait’s criticism and to respond. Stéphane Cardin suggested her fears were unwarranted and noted that the company planned to spend hundreds of million of dollars on Canadian projects — without any government legislation forcing them to do so.

Several Democrats, including Ocasio-Cortez, have recently floated taxing wealthy Americans up to 70 percent. But it was Omar who suggested this week that the wealthiest American pay up to 90 percent in taxes.
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Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), who is running for president in 2020, said during a CNN town hall this week that all semi-automatic guns should be outlawed. During the same town hall, she advocated for the eradication of the private health care industry, comments she quickly walked back.

Finally, it was also Omar who voiced support for Nicolás Maduro's regime in Venezuela, and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) who allegedly belonged to a Holocaust denier Facebook group.

During a bizarre press conference, in which Northam defended himself from accusations of being a racist, the embattled Virginia governor admitted that he once used shoe polish to "darken" his face for a Michael Jackson-themed dance contest in San Antonio.

Northam said he looks back at his actions with "regret" because he now understands "the harmful legacy of an action like that." He went on to explain that he won the dance contest because he looked how to moonwalk.

Friday, February 1, 2019

Private health insurance would only be allowed for extra benefits not covered by the plan, the bill’s text reveals:

SEC. 107. PROHIBITION AGAINST DUPLICATING COVERAGE.

(a) In General.—Beginning on the effective date described in section 106(a), it shall be unlawful for—

(1) a private health insurer to sell health insurance coverage that duplicates the benefits provided under this Act; or

(2) an employer to provide benefits for an employee, former employee, or the dependents of an employee or former employee that duplicate the benefits provided under this Act.

(b) Construction.—Nothing in this Act shall be construed as prohibiting the sale of health insurance coverage for any additional benefits not covered by this Act, including additional benefits that an employer may provide to employees or their dependents, or to former employees or their dependents.

Other co-sponsors who are running, or considering a run, for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020 are Sen. Kirsten Gellibrand (D-NY) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA).

In the context of a crisis in which humanity itself is the threat to survival, the “good guys, bad guys” approach to things can seem at once too complicated and too simple. (It is revealing that Bird Box, whose plot merged environmental catastrophe with the dangers of horror-movie-esque monsters, functioned more effectively as a meme than it did as a film.) And so there is another way of exploring what Kermode called the “End-feeling”: the Style section way. The way that cares less about archetypes and adventure, good guys and bad, and more about what the End-feeling actually feels like for those who are living it. This mode internalizes the anxieties of apocalypse not as tragedy, but as comedy.